HAPPINESS AND RAINDROPS
(a story by Pili Arándanos - illustrated by Bert)

To: Cristian Rodríguez


Mr. Rodríguez caught the bus every day, not to go to the beach at Barceloneta to dip his toes in the water as he did every June, and not to go to Petritxol Street to have a whipped cream topped chocolate served with those macaroons that he liked so much when he was a child. No. Nothing could be further from the truth. Mr. Rodríguez was engaged in a constant search for Happiness. But try as he might he just could not find it.

He looked everywhere. In his favourite old chest of drawers, in the street corner café, in the palm house in Ciudadela park, in a women’s changing room, on one of those swing boats where when you go up I go down and when you go down I go up, even at one of those marathons that slice the city of Barcelona in two and cause so much harrumphing until people smile at sight of the gazelle-like grannies taking part. Mr. Rodríguez looked inside a blueberry tart with only one blueberry, and even travelled as far as Paris, where he looked into that hidden lake at the Tuilleries with the pair of lovesick ducks, and from there he searched the world over until he arrived to Móstoles. Once there, he decided to look for something else: Raindrops.

After watching him for some time, a local elderly man -from Móstoles- approached him: “What are you doing, young man? It’s not one or the other. Both things are right there within your grasp - happiness and raindrops.”